


Stone and Stone

by FireEye



Category: Final Fantasy VI
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-07
Updated: 2013-05-07
Packaged: 2017-12-10 16:05:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/787896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FireEye/pseuds/FireEye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>With Shadow's death, Clyde will be reborn.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stone and Stone

**Author's Note:**

  * For [stharridan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stharridan/gifts).



> Prompt: _Shadow-centric. What does Shadow do after Kefka's defeat? Does he eventually tell Relm the truth? If so, what are the consequences? I'd really love to see some heated arguments with overprotective Strago, with Shadow trying to justify his rights while knowing that what he did was wrong. Whether or not Relm acknowledges Shadow as her father is up to you. Cameo appearances by Cyan, Sabin and Edgar would be awesome._

It bubbles to the surface, unbidden.  The quiet, lethal impulse that is his past, his shadow.  Nevertheless, Cyan blocks his underhanded kick, catching his foot and sending him sprawling to the flagstones.  His sword clatters from his hand and out of reach.  The point of his master’s blade flashes beneath his chin, and he stills on instinct.

“Thou’rt out of form,” Cyan admonishes.

Clyde’s lips twist together in a scowl, his nostrils flaring.  He had forgotten how strict the samurai could be; how strict this samurai could be, among samurai; how and _infuriating_ that strictness was.  He had forgotten how _infuriating_ feeling infuriation was.  “I’m _trying_.”

“Try all thou dost like,” Cyan said.  “Thou’rt still out of form.”

Clyde rolls his eyes.  In response to such irreverence, the edge of the blade meets his chin.  Clyde matches his steady gaze, and Cyan’s chest visibly compresses – a silent snort of derision – before the blade swings away from his throat.

Pointedly, Clyde dabs at the bead of blood on his chin, rolling it between his fingers.

Cyan cleans the speck of blood from his blade before sheathing it.  Clyde rolls over the dusty stone, reaching for his blade, and sheathes it without such care.  He ignores the hand his master offers, and all that comes with it, shoving to his feet.

“Cease this nonsense at once,” Cyan tells him, and Clyde’s head whips up.

“ _What_ nonsense?”

“If thou’rt going to learn to embrace life again, thou must givest up death.”

Clyde laughs, and the sound echoes dryly throughout the abandoned courtyard.  “Maybe I shouldn’t.”

Within the blink of an eye, Cyan has drawn his blade to once again hover above his throat.  Within the next breath, Clyde draws his own, deflecting the threat.  The rest of the wan afternoon is thus – movement to movement, reflex, counterstrike, sweat, and dust-born tears, until his limbs ache and life flows through him, whether he wants it to or not.

~*~

“Good morning.”

They could have been friends once.  Almost were, in a strange way.  Cyan hadn’t mention it, and Clyde felt a tickle of irritation, while Shadow kept him cool and unresponsive.

Sabin jabbed a thumb at him over his shoulder.  “Who’s this guy?”

Clyde catches Cyan’s eye, and the latter acquiesces to the unspoken message that flies under Sabin’s tall head.

“Clyde,” Cyan introduces him.  “My squire, for the moment.  I knew him when he was a boy.  He hath survived wrath and Ruin, and come out the better for it.”

Clyde rolls his eyes at the flowery nonsense.

“Does he talk?”

“If he doth desire.”  Cyan grins, flipping his blade upon the whetstone.  Clyde recognizes the familiar glimmer in the Prince of Figaro’s eye, a mere moment before Sabin throws an arm around his shoulders.

“Let’s you and me go practice in your training yard out there,” Sabin says, and pulling him towards the door, “I’ll teach you things even he doesn’t know.”

“Let’s,” Clyde agrees, raising his voice to a baritone.  To his relief, Sabin doesn’t appear to notice the slight, distinctive scratch he still can’t quite cover.

 

Cyan clips him one later for knocking Sabin on his ass, but the startled expression on the princeling’s face is well worth it.

~*~

“Why?”

“Why _what?_ ”

“Thou knowest _what_.”

Clyde glances about the empty dinner hall, where the Kings of old once feasted with their knights, and the laughter of children and baying of hounds once echoed.  Where a toddler had napped by the hearth, when the knights brought news of his father’s disappearance.

Why Doma.

Why now. 

“Just because I don’t have any honor, doesn’t mean I forgot everything you ever taught me,” Clyde remarks, the apple peel curling about his fingers as he shaves it away with his knife.  “Just because I don’t have... because I _never had_ a home, doesn’t mean I laughed when Doma burned.” He stabs the knife into the wooden table.  Flicking the peel off his wrist, he bites into the apple.  “It was the closest thing to a hometown that I ever knew, even for me, that counts for something.”

“Just because thou didst never tell her who you are – and dost not intend to, by the look of it – doesn’t mean you don’t want to be a man worth looking up to.”

It’s Shadow that eyes him across the table, and for a moment, Clyde is grateful.  Cyan merely smirks.

“I have known three to bear the name of _Arrowny_.  One whom I fought beside,” the old knight raises his fist, uncurling first his thumb, then each finger in turn, “one whom I trained, and one little brazen girl without a father.”

“It’s too late for that,” Clyde remarks, almost to himself.

“Only in death will it be too late.”

Clyde spits out a seed.  He sent a letter once, to Strago, in secret, and received no answer.  An answer unto itself, for it was too much to hope that death herself had visited the old man at long last.  Never mind, it was against The Way and everything Cyan was now trying to train out of him.

“Even if I wanted to,” he replied at length, “the old goat wouldn’t let me near her.”

“Respect for thine elders, _boy_.”

“If you’re so damned hellbent on getting involved, why don’t _you_ adopt her?”  Clyde asks.  “Then perhaps you’d have the elegant warrior poet of yore that you’ve always wanted for a squire.”

“Alas, but she hath thy tongue.”

Cyan smiles, and Clyde laughs.  For a moment the hall is bright and cheerful and warm.  If he looks to the hearth, maybe there will be a little girl, hands stained with charcoal.

~*~

Her name is Lotus.

They see her from the battlements at noon, and watch her progress across the plain throughout the day.  When she reaches the city gates, Cyan is there to meet her, with Clyde two steps behind and to his right, as tradition.  She bows gracefully, although the sword strapped across her back slides down around her arm.

“When I heard there were knights again living here, I came.  To learn, you see?” she explains.  “I’m from Far Reach.  My father was a samurai, before the Castle fell.”

Cyan studies her hard, before at long last turning to his squire.

“Thou wilst teach her.”

“Teach her what?” Clyde scoffs, “I can’t even begin, not by your reckoning.”

Cyan’s hand comes to rest on his shoulder, something akin to sympathy in his eyes.  “And this will be how thou dost start.”

 

It’s more difficult than he remembers, having someone rely on him.  Against Shadow’s best judgment, Clyde doesn’t teach her how to fight dirty.  Instead it’s form, finesse, philosophy.  Every once in a while, one of his old tricks will appear against the Master himself, but to Lotus, he teaches only The Way.

More come.  From Far Reach.  From South Water.  From Figaro, and Nikeah.  Even a rather scrappy lad from far off Zozo.  The throne is empty, but the castle is warm, even on cold winter nights.  Little by little, Clyde learns to live again.  Mostly for himself, and for a later day that may never come.

For _her_.

**Author's Note:**

> I... _ehem_.
> 
> So I kinda inadvertently latched on to the _What does Shadow do after Kefka's defeat?_ a little hard, but I tried to fit the undercurrent of Relm's influence into it as much as possible, even though Strago evaded me.
> 
> But I hope this satisfies, in some introspective way. :)


End file.
